3 Years ago I was out on a 5 Day had 11 dogs running a mixed team of Chins and Sibes. The Chins make great wheel dogs on a Sibe team and I love them on a long distance race it keeps them from burning out the Sibes. Anyways I was running against 9 other teams and their dogs and we were all pretty well spred out. Got through the first three days pretty good got to check points ahead of a couple teams and felt pretty good.

Now just to clear things up I know i have said that most sledding teams are pretty friendly. But still there are your occasional team that you Mushers and handlers dealing with with steel gloves because their so aggressive. i see more of these teams on long distance races. Well I took off the fourth morning rather early and knew pretty well the where abouts of the other teams. About halph way through our day I thought I would be smart and take a bit of a short cut on a trail cut by a atv through some once tall but now snow beat grass. Now i broke a rule not so much abotu the short cut but the fact that other teams would want to follow my newly set trail against their mushers wishes. Once again i was young and ignorent the atv trail went up a steel hillside setting them back up onto the dog trail. True it was infact a short cut alot smoother terran and such but when i saw this hill that rose high and steep above my head i had my questions. Tracker was leading along side Hitch and they were both pulling wanting to go up the steep hillside.

So I finally decided to go for it once again i was extremly stupid. So i hooked a line between Hitch and Trackers traces and starting coaxing and pulling. I had a light Rig and that was the other reason i thought the hill would be fine. It was EXTREMLY slippery and hard to climb due to the icey snow and underneath slippery grass. FINALLY after almost two horus of scrambling up this hill we got to the break in the trail so yeah it definatly was a LONG cut. I figured I was far behind anyone else by now . But I was wrong. I was too busy helping the rest of the dogs up on the trail and getting the sled situated i did'nt see the team coming up behind us on the trail until they hit us.

First i heard the Musher Yelling for his dogs to On By but there wasent any of that with in seconds his lead dog was on Hitch tearing him to shreds. The other dogs on his team were also wanting to get on it and mine now wanted to fight as well . So we're both sceraming at our dogs and trying to pull our dogs off of ach other with out getting torn up ourselves. And
as if it could'nt get worse this young kid maybe 21 comes up my broken trail he had a smaller team and so had less of a problem climbing the shot cut. Well then all hell broke loose an hour later and alot of blood an fur later our dogs were all seperated and untangled. I let the two opposing teams go ahead of me while i held my dogs sicne it was really my fault the whole thing happened. I surveryed the damgage on my dogs again I had Hitch in the Dog bag due to he had the worst injuries. The rest were mostly minor cuts and bruises.

I finnished the race the next day came in last of course and with my ego badly bruised because there was alot of joking about my "short cut". Luckily my team was injured so bad that they could'nt run every again. Needless to say i stick to the trail now.

Gurl...what Renee said! You gotta put these stories all together now..sticking to the trail is such a loaded lesson for us all! i cannot imagine all those dogs fighting in their traces..in must be insanity trying to seperate them..i don't know how u did it! SEems like u would no longer get one freed and the other would be tangled